Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) president Tomislav Karamarko said on Monday the strongest opposition party planned to come to power when the time was right because the government was leading the state and the people astray, which was dangerous and irritating.
"This megalomania and overbearing treatment of anyone who thinks differently is unbearable. We can't stand it any more," he said at a convention marking the HDZ's 24th anniversary.
Karamarko called the party's founder, the late Franjo Tudjman, the greatest Croat of the 20th century, and said the HDZ's achievements were historic. "Everything that needed to be done, the HDZ did under the leadership of Dr. Franjo Tudjman."
He said there had been downs but that the HDZ had been demonised and eaten humble pie enough because of what some of its members had done. "The new leadership said 'Out with corruption and crime from the HDZ, in with honesty and patriotism' and we are working on that."
Karamarko said the party would no longer let others label it a criminal organisation, wondering whether those who had created the Croatian state were a criminal organisation or those who had negated it from the start.
Commenting on the incumbent ruling coalition's poor economic results, he said the coalition had been very firm in carrying out political purges. "What they especially distinguished themselves in was the attempt to change the world view of Croatian society and Croatian man. They want to change the essence and what we are."
He went on to say that the ruling coalition still relapsed to the time before the 1990s, and that those talking the most about the European Union had been Tito's apologists during socialism.
Karamarko said the coalition was trying to change the law on cooperation with EU states on crimes so that an arrest warrant would be valid only if a crime was committed after August 2002. "Those who are suspected of crimes committed during the (1991-95) Homeland War must be extradited, but those who maybe committed them in Tito's time and terrorised the Croatian people we won't extradite," he said, describing this as a Byzantine approach by the ruling coalition.
He went on to say that Croatia was the only country entering the EU without having implemented even one European convention on communist crimes, although it had signed them all.
Karamarko said the HDZ must change Croatian society and do everything for the people to start living better, adding that when the time was right, the party must be ready for a takeover of power.
